New Google Algorithm Change Shows Uptick in Evolution Velocity

About one out of 60 English language searches are affected by the new algorithm changes that Google just rolled out in what is being termed the 24th Panda update. The new release, the 14th since the beginning of 2012 shows the Panda team rolling out releases more frequently as time passes (11 releases were seen in 2011).

The now-about-monthly releases are a boon to SEO firms in their marketing efforts to their incumbent clients. Panda was an algorithm shift first launched in February 2011 geared to rewarding sites with richer content and punishing sites with "thin" content. At the time, it partially addressed the increasingly poor user experience due to spammy pages designed merely to attract organic search traffic, and even some automated content generators.

The Panda algorithm was created by a machine, implementing machine learning techniques applied to a large data set of human ratings of sites on various factors such as design, speed, trustworthiness and other, sometimes subjective, factors.

The fast pace of algorithm updates makes it relatively inefficient to try to keep up with the formula with the purpose of gaming it. Just to make sure, in March of 2012 Google's update introduced a negative algorithmic factor weighed against sites perceived to be overly optimized.